Pink Floyd: Ummagumma

Ummagumma

Best song: Careful With That Axe Eugene

Worst song: The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Overall grade: Live album – 6 and studio album – 3. Overall – 4 because of inconsistency .

Pink Floyd’s first live album is also their best. That’s not to say I don’t like the other ones, but… well, put it this way, if I had a time machine and I was allowed to use it to go back in time to see live music, Pink Floyd in the sixties would be right at the top of my list. As it happens, I don’t have a time machine, and I never will, because if time travel was going to be invented, surely the people from the future would have travelled back in time and told us? But that’s hardly on topic. Point is, this album is the only official document of live 60s Floyd there is.

All four live tracks are better than their studio versions, and three of them are amazing in studio, so that tells you something. ‘Careful With That Axe Eugene’ was only ever released as a b-side and never worked so well in the studio setting, but live it’s mind-blowing, a masterpiece of playing with dynamics, suspense and shock complete with bone-chilling screams and the single vocal line which is growled with an ominous intensity.

‘Astronomy Domine’ is done in more of a psychedelic jam-band style, and again both are superb, although it’s always sad to hear David singing instead of Syd. ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ is majestic and powerful in its restrained quietness for the first few minutes, before becoming more improvisational near the end, and even though its counterpart on the ‘Saucerful’ album is one of my favourite Floyd songs ever, I still just about prefer this rendition. And lastly, there’s ‘A Saucerful of Secrets’ itself, the most similar to its original version, but with a ‘Celestial Voices’ section that’s infinitely more beautiful.

Then, because the band didn’t have any group compositions planned, and clearly didn’t like each other enough to get together and write any, so, ELP-style, each of them was given a quarter of a studio album to fill with their solo work. To be honest, they should have just made it a double live album, including Interstellar Overdrive and other such things, but maybe the record company wanted some new material.

One of the band members rose to the challenge superbly and came up with two classic songs, and the other three, well, didn’t. I’d like to say that it was somebody surprising like Nick Mason who excelled, but no, it was predictably Roger Waters. He was the only member to split his portion of record into two wildly different musical ideas. His first contribution was ‘Grantchester Meadows’, possibly his most successful pastoral folk rock style piece, although ‘If’ comes close. Spacious, gently played and softly sung, someone who normally sees the Floyd as too weird could easily enjoy this song, so long as they turn it off before the fly gets swatted at the end. However, the same can’t be said for ‘Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave and Grooving With A Pict’ (on my list of 5 Greatest Song Titles Ever™; coming soon) which I can’t in good faith refer to as music. Essentially, it’s Roger testing out all the studio effects he could, and only on his voice – there’s no instruments at all in this song… which technically makes it one of the first purely electronic songs? The Scottish poetry and animal noises are hilarious once in a while, but I’d be concerned if someone claimed to play it every day.

Going down in quality, David Gilmour writes a piece called ‘The Narrow Way’, which I think could have been really good if the rest of the group had been involved with writing it. Sadly, I don’t think a 23-year-old Gilmour was capable of successfully writing a 12-minute track, so although there’s some groovy space rock in the second part and a good melody in the final, vocal part, it feels more like an unfinished demo than a real song.

Down one more, Rick Wright pens a pseudo-classical piece based on a Greek myth about a guy called Sisyphus who was forced to roll a boulder up a hill, watch it fall back down and repeat this for eternity. Does it sound like Rick’s getting ideas above his station? He is. The piece isn’t worthless, as Rick’s a good player and this does show through at times, like the piano section which is quite enjoyable, but overall it’s hardly essential listening.

Since it’s Rick’s birthday at the time I’m writing this (July 28) I feel compelled to mention that he did write some good songs and I’m a big fan of his 1996 solo album.

Last, there’s Nick Mason’s ‘The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party’. My favourite thing about this closer is the title and my second favourite is the flute intro/outro, which is played by his now-ex-wife. The rest of it is a 9-minute Mason drum solo, and although I really like long drum solos played by skilled, exciting and inventive players, Nick Mason is none of these things, and I would not encourage listening multiple times in search of hidden depths – there aren’t any. Nick is a good speaker and writer, though, so perhaps he should have used his section of the record to tell a story.

A necessary purchase, but if you eventually start using the studio disc as a coaster, don’t be too surprised.